TLMC12 Feedback Thread

Hi everybody, before we start anything! congrats to the TLMC#12 finalists!

This thread is mostly dedicated to those that didn't made it to the finals to ask questions about their maps.

Tho to those inpatient souls it is very much recommended to first check out previous "Mapping Guidelines" and the TLMC8, 9 & 10 feedback threads before you submit your questions, as I don't have much time and I have to use it where counts.

If you would like to receive feedback on your map, post the name of your map, the overview and any specific questions you might have, as a further restrictions, I will only be able to give feedback to 2 maps per person, sadly time is ever more scarce, but I'll try to get to as many of you as possible.

Important! please try to ask specific questions, and not asking for "General feedback", as doing that will make me less likely to give you feedback because of the considerable amount of time it would take me to write all the ideas down.

There might be videos this time around, there might not! No promises, only hopes and dreams. And in the same fashion, other judges might also join, or might not, it depends on their own personal timeframes.

-Was this map more of a 'standard map' over macro map due to design/limiting center?

I would ask 2 questions but these two will generally help me with macro map design.If I end up asking a general question, give me a single factor to the answer and I'm likely will be able to piece it together.Thanks anyways! I hope this help me better design maps within these factors for TLMC13 and onwards (much like the TLMC10 feedback thread helped me for preparing for TLMC11!)

Just looking for all the feedbacksies! Hoping to compete in TLMC 13 whenever that comes around and I'd love to get as much as I can from my submission in terms of feedback.

EDIT: Missed the note on specific feedback during the first read. How would I go about making the base layout less awkward? If I recall correctly you said in the Discord some stuff about it but was too tired to go in depth.

I'm aware of a lack of overlord pods and potential liberator issues at the horizontal third.

Currently I placed overlord pods above both rocks (clockwise behind them). I have an updated image with aforementioned pods but since they were not part of the official submission you're free to ignore it.

Furthermore, I'm in no rush with feedback so feel free to put this last (or even ignore it) if the workload becomes too much.

Curious what the biggest issue with this map is because it has the standard main/nat, has a choice of thirds and from each third you have many options for a 4th so the expansion pattern of the map would be constantly changing and thus bending to the styles of the players. Each base offers plenty of harass opportunities to keep it from being too turtlish. I'm guessing maybe the middle is too restricted and judges didn't like that? Although, it's something that we don't see often and would force engagements in the middle where it's choked I figured.

Would prefer to know what the biggest issue with this map is and if you believe it's the gold or not? Having a super easily takeable but super harassable gold base seems like a huge risk vs reward which would be fun. The rocks block early game movement and also help hold / harass the gold. The pathways, especially once open are everywhere around the map, plus there aren't too many super wide open spaces so even moving armies anywhere on the map doesn't make you feel completely exposed. Yet, there are plenty of attack paths so flanks can easily happen. I believe this map is improved on from the TLMC11 version which judges said the middle lowground bases didn't serve a purpose but still curious.

Mostly i had my hopes for this map. I like it. Was it dismissed because of the offensive highground? Thats what i maybe would expect, but i think it is far away enough, even with offensive tanks. And it wasnt called out in the pre-feedback. Is it maybe just too "standard" in a way and brings nothing new?!

In the Pre-judging Feedback i was suggested to move the IZG away from the center. We'll i didn't. And explained my thoughts in the submission message... + Show Spoiler +

A solid standard map, that has a little bit of a different middle part. The XNT is very powerful, so the straight way through the middle is blocked off with Inhibitor zones, to even this out. In the older Version of the map from TLMC11, the small lowground in the middle could be totally blocked off with 4x collapsible rocks, which was interesting, but created some little racial imbalances. So the inhibitor zones were just perfectly to balanced out the XNT. The middle part of this map, was just predestined for inhibitor zones.

Despite the Presubmission feedback, i didnt change the inhibitor fields, after thinking about this for a long time. Im not a fan of placing more inhibitor zones and combine those with additional rocks or such. I think it would make the map too complicated and a bit annoying to play on. The introduction of inhibitor zones themself add a pretty new features, that needs to be used very carefully. They need to be introduced in a gentle way, if they should be ladder apropiate, and not used all over the place to overkill the players in like 6 different places with 2 different appraches to it.Players shouldn't be forced to move through them at some point. The map should mostly be played in a normal fashion, with a little twist, or they end up like RMTs.

Also im completely not a fan of a Inhibitor zone+ rock combination to block off a path. First a smaller army, ist just faster when it moves through the field. Later a bigger army might clear the rocks quicker, but then there will be a path that is half affected from an inhibitor zone, half not. An army moving through will be half quick, and half slow, and gets scattered, or you wait with the quicker part for the slower part to catch up and in the end you could have just blocked the complete path with the inhibitor field anyway.

I think have a path half affected from the inhibitor zone, can be very annoying. Image you are always forced to manually funnel a bigger army through the thin part of the path that is not affected by the zone, because the ai will not care of the zone when it calculates army movement. You would have to split your army into smaller parts and move them one after the other, to be quicker then move them all at once.

This might add something to do for the player and rewards the player that micromanages more, but for eventual viewers it is more entertaining to watch actual interaction between players, and not players trying to properly move smaller parts of an army around the inhibitor zones. Sc2 has enough action to offer we dont need aditional minigames on the map. Also it is just annoying for players that dont have a proper apm to micromanage you army movement like that and still keep up your macro. Just my thoughts.

TLDR.:I really wanted few IZGs and i wanted to balance out the powerful XNT with a XNT + IZG combo.As we saw in the tournament people don't really micro around the IZGs and tbh dont really interact with the IZGs at all. They mostly just didnt care, the IZGs had little impact. Wouldnt it be nice when players are forced to interact with the IZGs because its combined with a powerful XNT and dont just move through them somewhere on the map by chance?So was it maybe dismissed because you think XNT + IZG isnt as cool of a combo as i thought, and i didn't spam IZGs enough everywhere?

1) Do judges feel that a layout as crazy as this will always be automatically disqualified in the TLMC (short of a crazy natural/third set up challenge)?2) This map isn't the most aesthetically pleasing. Did that come up with judges, and if so, how heavily is that weighed?

Looking forward to your feedback and insight into the judging process!

I'm sorry for adding to already long waiting queue. In fact, Kantu gave me lots of nice feedbacks already along with AVEX so this time I also want to get comments from other judges too. Especially those player aspects. Or at least their thoughts during judging period.

Kantu kindly informed me of how the map didn't make it. It was too vanilla with uninteresting middle and it was more like a macro map.

To resubmit it in a standard category, can removing rock towers at the thirds' entrances work? Also I'm having a hard time fixing its middle since its external high grounds are already compactly placed. I can't really put more elevations there... Can bridges or simple chokepoints work there? Or a single obstacle on the middle to make it doughnut shape? I think the middle is alright or just hard to fix without handling outer basins.

Hard to make any specific question for this map. This map is very standard macro map. I fixed the map after pre-judging feedbacks to make it more interesting. It is highly defensive but that cannot be a problem?

Maybe its relatively small mains were the problem? Or were there too many chokepoints? I'd really like to know any comments from judging processes.

Was the usage of IZGs not appealing enough, or were other aspects of the map too weak?

As you well noticed the biggest issue from my personal perspective was the fact that first the overly diverging attack paths mean that players armies can't easily meet in the center creating a higher preponderance to base race situations.

Then you have got the overly easy map split axis

Players have been focusing more and more on these map split situations in the latest TLMC's, and as you might have seen aswell it is becoming pretty standard for maps to reach such late stage games, therefore going forward it would be very recommended for mapmakers to focus more in making sure that said lategame stages arent problematic causing overly passive gameplay.

The last factor was of couse the slim usage of Slowing Zones specially in the areas where players will interact the most, and the alternate issue of them being in areas that will promote overly passive gameplay.

If you want more feedback on it, id recommend asking Avex, as he also probably had other things to say.

Was the meta of the gold walls and natural ramp walls too much? Or was the meta too advanced for the noobs? Any other glaring issues?

For this particular map, I think that the mix of Gold patches with the new wall patches is just too much for overall playerbase, that's it without even mentioning the metagame from such a thing, just picture a Z taking a proxy hatch there, getting some spines mining from the gold patches like people used to do on Expedition Lost and wall patches only to then gain a second entrance to the enemy base by mining the patches at the ramp. It is simply too much synergy.

I think that the idea of having alternative entrances to the nat with the new mineral walls is certainty something that everybody needs to explore more of, specially now that we saw that RQM did with Thunderbird and the 5 mineral patches, but we still gotta be careful with how we set up these sort of things.

When it comes to structural spacing of the map, I feel that there's simply too much space not used efficiently enough, around the 3 and 6 oclock areas, right "behind" the natural bases there is some air space that isnt strictly needed, and could have been better used by pushing the main and natural bases closer to the edge of the map, therefore releasing space to be used more in the center, and that way you could have done something more interesting than the long thin path, maybe something of a snakey path? Akin to a horizontally mirroed Anomaly. That said, it would still be problematic because as you know the mirror symmetry doesnt lends itself to creating all that interesting SC2 maps.

-Was this map exactly leaning towards more turtle play, due to the limited paths into the multiple amount of bases?

Indeed, the map is considerably turtly, specially so because of the very, very short distances between bases and the relative ease of securing nearby bases once a third has already been secured. Now, given the overall openness of the lowground in front of the natural, I dont think that's too much a problem, and other judges gave the map a "medium" set of ratings, so it can be agreed that it isnt "god awful" or anything of the sort, yet because of said openness and lack of distinct map features it would certainty benefit Z maybe overly so. I would indeed recommend you to see what Gemini would ask of it, Tweet at him telling him Im interested on his perspectives about it, that should suffice. And hopefully Avex might be able to chime in aswell.

Also, the map's natural was simply *choke-full* of cannon rush spots, and when it came to my personal rating, that certainty played a role on the rating I gave it.

It is simply not good to have those kind of situations where you end up creating situations that provide false choices to players, in this case players might easily think that they can walloff with help of the rocks, when that's simply not the case, in further maps be sure that the rocks you use are 6x6 or that at least allow for walling of the ramp.

When it comes to the question itself, yeah, I would indeed say that the map falls within the spectrum of macro, because of the rather safe third base and the constricted center of the map. That said, the very center of it I find it overly restrictive when it comes to actually being able to create more interesting army movement through it.

The biggest issue continues to be the area in front of the third base, given that said unpathable area is too big for the intended gameplay outcomes of creating two main central attack paths, besides that issue there is the case that the wings of the map simply arent compelling, and the biggest reflection of that are the rocks placed in the bush of line of sight blockers.

The central pathways at their core bring problems of armies attacking up the central highground and becoming overly hard to flank, that can be very much a problem with ranged siege units. So even when the distance between the lowground third base and the central highground is enough to ward off the direct problems caused by potential siegetanks attacking from the highground, it isnt enough to ward off against the gameplay staleness that can come from said situations.

Just looking for all the feedbacksies! Hoping to compete in TLMC 13 whenever that comes around and I'd love to get as much as I can from my submission in terms of feedback.

EDIT: Missed the note on specific feedback during the first read. How would I go about making the base layout less awkward? If I recall correctly you said in the Discord some stuff about it but was too tired to go in depth.

-Polar20IQ

First thing to mention, is that on the map there is a false choice on the overlord pod by the natural choke

Generally overlord pods such as that one are placed on the opposite side of the main ramp, in order to assure that there are no false choices in the map which cause frustration all around, in this case in particular, I dont consider it to be a highly egregious situation because of the size of the overlord pod which allows Zerg players to move the overlord slightly farther away of the main ramp and units in the highground, yet that's still not really ideal, and there's no strong reason why the overlord pod couldnt be on the other side, maybe smaller in size aswell, that way reducing potential player frustration.

As a detail, I would recommend you to add more doodads to the unpathable highgrounds/overlord pods, in order to assure that players can instantly recognize those as being unpathable. As it stands the doodad usage with the purple craters, because you are using said craters in other pathable areas of the map from my perspective doesnt communicate enough that said highgrounds arent pathable.

Map has got a dangerous cannon rush spot behing the mineral line, and a less problematic one by the main base ramp, which probably should still be taken care of given that's a 2 pylon cannon rush.

Now, the biggest issue with Dreaming Shore isnt that as you said might be too dull, specially given its center, I think that it is a fairly cool layout, it is very standard indeed, but that's not directly a problem. The problem is its usage of space

In green, I highlighted the areas which I consider to be problematic, in red, a mineral line which should have been a "cardinal" mineral line tucked against the edge of the map instead, and in purple the corner ramps, which are just not overall well placed as they are highly redundant. In such an scenario many times it is simply better to not have corners at all and leave that space for pretty aesthetics.

What I would recommend before proceeding further is to try and regain more playable area from unpathable areas, cliffing and doodads, then see how you can use that extra space to further accent the map, or create more battle areas or highly strategical spots. And ofc be sure to post in to the #WIP maps channel in discord!

The main/top-left/bottom-right corner of map has got most of the previous feedback and I have made changes based on it. But the other bottom-left/top-right corner and middle of map has received only little feedback. Thus, I would like to hear any feedback about those areas, not colorized with cyan.+ Show Spoiler +

Is there any possible issues with layout and flow of the map? Are “chokes” reasonably sized or are they too wide and make paths too monotonous and corridor like? Also how you view the LOS blocker usage on map?

As newer map maker I don't really know what to polish. Polish only texturing, decoration and on smaller scale pathing or address bigger issues not yet mentioned?

Thanks for the feedback Kantuva.And easy from what I can pick together from the feedback, I have work to do for macro.But that is no surprise. Choke full of cannon rush spots is a understandable factor for one maps problems.Besides openness that favors zerg and nothing as appealing, and Nye reg problems that I could of stopped if I considered redesigning and removing of some if not 90% of debris/rocks.

Again thank you, with that I can start to improve my macro general design. And possible fix Nye Reg! (I like the map too much)

I know this map came pretty close to making it to the finalists so I assume there aren’t any super serious major issues, but here’s a few things I’m wondering about…

- How much impact did the base count have? There's only 14 bases on the map but I don’t think I could really fit any more in. In the pre-judging feedback there were some concerns about having only 14 bases for a macro map, so do you feel that I should try to keep this macro or would it be better to have it as standard, and if so, should some things be changed in order to make it more standard or would it be ok as it is? What I would be concerned with is that it would be too large for a standard map as it is 154x136 in size.

-If I were to keep it as macro, are the thirds still too open? I guess the lowground third could be made a bit safer to take than what it is now. I did make the choke at the highground triangle narrower already after the initial feedback. Apart from making the thirds safer, are there some other ways to make it more macro?

Was the usage of IZGs not appealing enough, or were other aspects of the map too weak?

As you well noticed the biggest issue from my personal perspective was the fact that first the overly diverging attack paths mean that players armies can't easily meet in the center creating a higher preponderance to base race situations.

Players have been focusing more and more on these map split situations in the latest TLMC's, and as you might have seen aswell it is becoming pretty standard for maps to reach such late stage games, therefore going forward it would be very recommended for mapmakers to focus more in making sure that said lategame stages arent problematic causing overly passive gameplay.

The last factor was of couse the slim usage of Slowing Zones specially in the areas where players will interact the most, and the alternate issue of them being in areas that will promote overly passive gameplay.

If you want more feedback on it, id recommend asking Avex, as he also probably had other things to say.

Was the meta of the gold walls and natural ramp walls too much? Or was the meta too advanced for the noobs? Any other glaring issues?

For this particular map, I think that the mix of Gold patches with the new wall patches is just too much for overall playerbase, that's it without even mentioning the metagame from such a thing, just picture a Z taking a proxy hatch there, getting some spines mining from the gold patches like people used to do on Expedition Lost and wall patches only to then gain a second entrance to the enemy base by mining the patches at the ramp. It is simply too much synergy.

I think that the idea of having alternative entrances to the nat with the new mineral walls is certainty something that everybody needs to explore more of, specially now that we saw that RQM did with Thunderbird and the 5 mineral patches, but we still gotta be careful with how we set up these sort of things.

When it comes to structural spacing of the map, I feel that there's simply too much space not used efficiently enough, around the 3 and 6 oclock areas, right "behind" the natural bases there is some air space that isnt strictly needed, and could have been better used by pushing the main and natural bases closer to the edge of the map, therefore releasing space to be used more in the center, and that way you could have done something more interesting than the long thin path, maybe something of a snakey path? Akin to a horizontally mirroed Anomaly. That said, it would still be problematic because as you know the mirror symmetry doesnt lends itself to creating all that interesting SC2 maps.

Is it considered a problem that the entire nat/in-base third can be blinked/DT shaded/infested terran/etc. over without vision?